


The Snake Drop Portion of Your Thesis Defense

by NormalAnomaly



Category: Glowfic and Related Works
Genre: Crack, Gen, arguably technically Marvel universe but if you are here for Marvel you will be disappointed, glowfic, glowfic inside baseball, like the very center of the baseball, the snake fight portion of your thesis defense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:29:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28396185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NormalAnomaly/pseuds/NormalAnomaly
Summary: Bruce Banner defends his thesis.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	The Snake Drop Portion of Your Thesis Defense

**Prologue**

Bruce Banner's thesis defense was going to be just like everyone else's. 

Everyone else was nervous. Everyone else had prepared and worked and worried. Everyone else had been reassured by their advisor that they wouldn't let anyone schedule a defense who wasn't going to pass. Everyone gave their presentation and answered questions and fought a snake and graduated and soon it would be nothing but a fond memory, seen through the rose-colored glasses of Not Having To Do It Again Ever.

He kept telling himself that and not believing it.

Eventually his day to present rolled around. He talked about the things he had learned about the effects of aging on the immune system (IN MICE). He had spent five years on this research, and if he got sent back in time to do it over again without all the dead ends it would be about six months of actual progress. But that, too, happened to everyone. If you didn't have to do the same things over and over, the saying went, it wouldn't be called research.

The committee members asked him questions. They were intelligent questions and tricky ones, but unlike the ones in his nightmares they were in English and Bruce was wearing pants and his fourth grade gym teacher did not get involved at any point. His hands, jammed in his pockets, were clammy enough you could make chowder out of them. But after what might have been two minutes or two hours the professors looked at each other and agreed that they were out of questions. 

"We now move on to the snake fight portion," Bruce's advisor intoned, pointing to the door at the back of the room. "Head through there; Mr. Wilson should have dropped off the snake."

Mr. Wilson was the guy in the facilities department who picked the snakes. Sure, he probably had various other duties too, but all the grad students knew him as Snake Guy. He seemed to lean into the mystique, what with how he never took his mask off and never denied the silly rumors people spread about him. It was your typical urban legend fare--bring him Mexican food and he'd tell your future, one time a snake bit his hand clean off and the next day he was fine, blah blah blah. But of course fighting the snake didn't involve actually interacting with Mr. Wilson; he selected the snake, released it, and left.

Which was why Bruce was very surprised to see him still in there.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Wilson?"

"Not for meeeee!" Cackled the man under Mr. Wilson's mask, who was probably him.

Well that didn't sound ominous at all! "Um."

"Ah, relax, you'll have fun too. Or it will suck. Or both of those repeatedly. Really this could go a lot of places."

Bruce remembered belatedly to look around for the snake and _holy shitfuck it's huge and what's that on its head—_

**Epilogue**

The giant snake with a mirror for a face was eventually subdued by a squad of campus police. Bruce Banner was awarded a posthumous PhD on the grounds that he had been supposed to get a garter snake. Mr. Wilson escaped capture and was never seen again; a note found in his office read:

_I did the one thing I was there to do, adequately inadequate warning and all. What for should I stick around for the epilogue?  
—Deadpool_


End file.
